I created this blog to record my various experiences with building and weaving on a warp weighted loom. Since then I have decided to not only blog my loom activities, but all the other projects that distract me along the way.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Finally - a loom post.

Close up of 100 threads and the rubberbands that kept them from flying off the chairs :)

Today I started the basic warp for the loom. The fiber is pretty light weight two ply of some kind of synthetic origin (read as - it was free and it's unlabeled). I set to chairs about 6 feet apart and started walking. Note the rubberbands at the top of the chairs - these were crucial - otherwise the warp didn't stay on my chairs and made a big mess :)What you see is one hundred threads...yes this means I had to walk around the chairs 100X. What this tells me is either I will get a lot of walking done while warping - or I will decide that I really am that lazy and have my hubby make me a warping board. Considering I was thinking that this first attempt should be about 600+ threads, we'll see what happens...

This is what 100 threads looks like in my hand.

I moved the top bar down so I could reach it to tie on the warp. I have decided to not card weave the warp into a band and sew it to the loom due to that fact that this piece will be a test piece. Besides, not every piece of weaving was done in this way. If I was making a piece that needed to have nice edges I could see the merit in weaving the band and have band of card weaving down the sides, but since I am learning the basics - I figured it was better to keep things as simple as possible at first and then build from there. The warp threads are tied on in bundles of five and so far seem to be behaving themselves...

A new member of the Barony, who is also a fiber person, was able to go to Pennsic and take a warp weighted weaving class there (I'm sooo jealous!) - She is going to come over next week and help with the chaining of the warp and the heddles.

My goal with this piece is to make enough to make something for my son.